I read this letter at the state convention last Saturday and asked this young man to email me a copy so I could send it out. I hope we’ve got more like him in the rising generation to help light the way! What a great letter.

Dear Rep. Matheson:

I am an eighth grade student at Mountainville Academy in Alpine, Utah. I am highly concerned about the terrible state our nation is in. I am especially concerned about health care and the way our congress has handled it. Instead of listening to common sense and reason, they listened to special interests, unions, and the socialist countries of Europe. We can all agree that our nation’s health care system needs to be fixed, but creating a totalitarian system where the government forces you to buy health insurance is not the answer. This is why we need you to repeal the health care law.

It has been proven time and time again that a universal health care system is a terrible way to improve the health of the citizens. What a disgrace it is to the miracle of modern medicine, that the person making decisions about my health won’t be a surgeon or a doctor, but a politician in Washington who most likely doesn’t know anything about medicine. The result of this system will be decreased health and less care for patients.

If this “health” care system was all about health, then why the hefty price tag? If they really want to improve the health of Americans, then why is the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) in charge of our health care instead of private health care providers? The answer is simple, it isn’t about health care, it is about power and control. After this bill was passed, the US government now owns among others; the entire health care system (which is 1/6th of our economy), the student loans industry, pieces of General Motors and Chrysler, and almost 70 percent of my home state Utah.

We all know that what they are doing is unsustainable. I believe that this was the plan all along. There are many politicians in Washington that would like to fundamentally transform these united states into some socialist utopia where the roads are paved with gold and candy rains from the sky. The only way for them to do it is to first slowly build up their framework within our economic infrastructure, then they tear it down and start on their path to communism, which will ultimately fail. I believe that this law will become the straw that will break the camel’s back .

We need to repeal this law so we can fix health care the right way, by puting it in the hands of the people! The government is just a tumor that feeds on the entrepreneurial spirit of Americans. If we remove the tumor, then Americans are free to work their magic. That is what they did in the forgotten depression. Let me explain, during 1920-1921 our country went through a small depression. It could have lasted for many years like the great depression, but it didn’t.Thomas E woods explained why in his paper, The Forgotten depression; “The economic situation in 1920 was grim. By that year unemployment had jumped from 4 percent to nearly 12 percent, and GNP declined 17 percent. No wonder, then, that Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover (falsely characterized as a supporter of laissez-faire economics) urged President Harding to consider an array of interventions to turn the economy around. Hoover was ignored. Instead of “fiscal stimulus,” Harding cut the government’s budget nearly in half between 1920 and 1922. The rest of Harding’s approach was equally laissez-faire. Tax rates were slashed for all income groups. The national debt was reduced by one-third..”By the late summer of 1921, signs of recovery were already visible. The following year, unemployment was back down to 6.7 percent and it was only 2.4 percent by 1923.” That is the beauty of the free market system. If you have a problem, you have the people solve it, not the government. Ronald Reagan once said; “Government is not the solution to our problem, Government is the problem.” What they did during the lost depression is what we need to do with health care, get government out of the way so private insurers and health care providers can straighten out the mess.

I would like to conclude with another passage from Thomas Woods’ paper; “The experience of 1920-1921 reinforces the contention of genuine free-market economists that government intervention is a hindrance to economic recovery. It is not in spite of the absence of fiscal and monetary stimulus that the economy recovered from the 1920-1921 depression. It is because those things were avoided that recovery came. The next time we are solemnly warned to recall the lessons of history lest our economy deteriorate still further, we ought to refer to this episode, and observe how hastily our interrogators try to change the subject.” I hope that you will use the lessons learned in the past to help our country today.

9 Responses to “Mitchell Baker’s Letter”

I'm sorry but I work as a copy editor for a publishing company, and a 13 year old did not write this letter. There is an adult hand at work here. Shame on the person who misrepresents him or herself and masquerades as a thirteen year old child. I am willing to bet that if I interviewed this young man (if he is a real person) about the terminology used in the letter, he would be dumbfounded.

I have lived long to know that a child this young does not have the breadth of knowledge, the skills as a political writer, or the vocabulary and syntax to write this letter. I've worked in this business for a long time. If a fourteen year old wrote this letter, he is the most gifted political writer I have seen in my long career. There are a few mechanical problems with this letter, but if he did write letter, there was most likely a good degree of adult help. Like I said before, just a few minutes talking to the author will shed light on the authenticity of the letter's authorship.